BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
From the salmon fishing grounds to the Special Collections library, from the vanishing rural world of pheasant hunting and canning along the banks of the Fraser River to the deck of the Titanic and the famous book collector's tragic fate, Tim Bowling's startling and powerful eighth collection of poems moves seamlessly between the riches of nature and the riches of art.
[Many of the poems] reflect on a past washed with the golden glow of remembrance ... and lament the inevitability of change and decay. There is a Dylan Thomas-like cast to many of these poignant, loping narratives, which remind us that Nothing Gold Can Stay: not wonder ... not times with parents, and not even, perhaps most devastatingly, a way of life and an ecosystem ...
--Janice Fiamengo, Journal of Canadian Poetry
Magical, yet very real.
--Prairie Books NOW
Bowling has a powerful elegiac voice that often recalls his childhood in the salmon fishing grounds of B.C. ... His work has an unusual sonic lushness.
--Maurice Mierau, Winnipeg Free Press
The Book Collector is Edmonton-based poet Tim Bowling's eighth collection. Add to that three novels, a collection of interviews edited by him, and the 2007 memoir The Lost Coast, and you've got one industrious writer. He is also one of the most gifted poets in the country.
--Zachariah Wells, Quill & Quire
...hauntingly imagined and deftly crafted.
--Owen Percy, Canadian Literature